Handel composed Hercules for his 1744-45 oratorio season as the secular foil to one of his most ambitious sacred dramas, Belshazzar, hoping to repeat the success of the previous season’s Samson/Semele pairing. Like Semele, Hercules, which Handel called ‘A Musical Drama’, is an English opera in all but name and shares its theme of the destructive power of sexual jealousy. Handel’s music is of outstanding quality and the commanding figure of Dejanira – rapturous in her love for her returning hero, distraught at his imagined dalliance with Iöle, eventually mad with despair at the enormity of her misguided actions – is one of his most powerfully drawn female rôles.

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Handel’s Hercules contained some of his finest dramatic writing, though in his lifetime it was an unqualified failure.

We tend to look back on Handel as having enjoyed a distinguished life as an English composer following his arrival in London, but closer inspection reveals a life littered with downfalls. Hercules was intended to be one of the highlights of a season Handel had booked at the King’s Theatre in Haymarket in 1744, but for a number of reasons it was a fiasco on the opening night and the second performance failed to draw an audience. It was such a disaster that Handel cancelled the rest of the Haymarket season. Undeterred he scheduled three performances seven years later in 1752, but again it again failed to please anyone. At almost three hours it is a grossly overblown score, with so much padding that any sensible composer would have hacked it out before its revival. Strangely the conductor of this new recording, Joachim Carlos Martini, decides to concentrate on the lyrical moments allowing the dramatic ones will look after themselves. Though we have not the slightest idea of the vocal style of the period, he brings an element of period authenticity with the help of the Frankfurt Baroque Orchestra. Vocally he has some reliable singers: Franz Vitzthum’s sweet-toned countertenor is heard to good effect as Lichas, with a bright and young voice from Gerlinde Samann as Iole, her handling of the demanding florid writing in such arias as Ah! Think what ills the jealous prove showing commendable virtuosity. The much experienced Peter Kooij makes a resolute Hercules, but the downside is the use of a largely German cast for an English language work. Much of the time they could be singing in any language, the problem compounded by a lack of words in the accompanying booklet. The Junge Kantorei perform with their usual enthusiasm, and the recording engineers have achieved very good balance between singers and instruments. Not ideal, but as a rarity and at super-budget price it is well worth hearing.

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